Conflict of Interests

"Sontarans - can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em."

Writer: Dan Abnett
Format: Comic Strip
Released: January 1992
Printed in: DWM 183

Synopsis

The Foreign Hazard Duty team led by Captain Geoff Monmouth are on the planet Aleph 777 in he Deneb Sector protecting the ruins of a site of great archaeological significance from the Sontarans. Breaking from the fighting and under a white flag, the leaders try to establish why the other is there.

Verdict

Conflict of Interests was not the best comic strip story in the world, it has to be said. This is my lowest rating for quite some time and one of my lowest ever - I actually don't think I've ever given less but I would have to check. That would involve some serious consultation of my notes or scrolling through 1300+ blog entries and that just doesn't appeal to me. I was hoping this would see a positive return to the Evening's Empire graphic novel for myself but sadly it really was quite the opposite! It's such a shame that the quality in this collection of stories thus far has been incredibly fluctuating and I do hope that now I get into a consistent run of purely Seventh Doctor comic strips, the quality improves and becomes more consistent. I am fully appreciative of the conditions surrounding this release with the issues concerning the production and deadline of the graphic novel's titular story at the time in Doctor Who Magazine, but that doesn't really mean that I should not give this story any slack. It was quite bad and just rather boring. I couldn't comprehend why we shouldn't understand what the Sontarans were saying and it just made their panels quite pointless. It didn't add anything to story because we had no idea what they were saying! We had a brief translator but even then he wasn't sure on what precisely was said so that just seemed another waste. I do hope the FHD feature in some of the stories that I have to read in this collection as that would make sense in terms of the ordering of the stories in this graphic novel but they didn't exactly seem the most interesting bunch of characters so I won't really mind just forgetting all about this one. Nothing much happened, nothing was resolved and it was bland. I'm honestly surprised I gave it as high as I did! I do think the lack of the Doctor's presence contributed to the poorer standard of story but there have been numerous adventures without him that have been superb so that is no excuse. The Sontarans are a great and familiar enemy but they really didn't offer much here which was a big shame as I adore them. The ending was shocking and I mean that in the negative, not surprising, tense. Nothing was resolved and the FHD and Sontarans just continued fighting as the story had started. It didn't make much sense to me and left me a little disappointed. Overall, this was quite a poor comic strip.

Rating: 4/10